I'll jump in not because it will be embarrassing for me but because I hope it will be helpful for others: - Roomba (robotic vacuum cleaner) - Philips color Pronto (color programmable touchscreen remote) - Wireless headphones for home (brand doesn't matter) - RCA HD DirecTV TV (tuner built-in this 38" tv but no other HD input :-( - Jabra bluetooth headset (the one with the AAA battery) I could go on, but I'll stop there.

Early Adopter Extraordinaire!

Technically my fiancee owns it, but the RCA Lyra RD1080 is a pretty cruddy device - its insistence on digital rights managment means that every audio file you upload gets encrypted on the fly, more than doubling the time it takes to send files over its exceedingly slow USB 1.1 interface. I hate that thing. And she won't let me buy her an iPod...

Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do.
-Donald Knuth

As the 'proud'? new owner of an AirPort Express, I mostly agree. It seems like this device has the 'cool' factor because of its multifunctions, but in reality you can probably only use one or maybe two of its features at a time, so it ends up being overpriced. That being said, I am just using it for wireless audio, and it does the job just fine (assuming you run iTunes or hack it).

See, the hotel room trick was exactly the trick I really wanted the AirPort for, but when I plugged it in to the hotel WAN, all I ever got was the blinking amber light. Trying to connect to it wirelessly to check the configuration also failed! My laptop runs Windows XP - maybe this is a problem in connecting?

Not sure which version of the iPod you are referring to but I will say from having tried them all that there were certainly some big bumps early on. Latest iterations though have fixed many of the problems you mention. One thing you didn't mention is that the headphones suck. Who cares about looking trendy if the music sounds like crack (inside joke:-). I think Apple should give a rebate to everyone who really cares enough about their music to buy real headphones. BTW, Will Ferrell's iPod ads were the best.

Early Adopter Extraordinaire!

I had a first generation that lasted only a few weeks before dying. I annoyed the group at the Apple store for weeks before getting a second generation that didn't seem to improve things. I almost got a third generation when they released the U2 iPod... but come on ... if you are going to make a black iPod, make it all black please. Black skin with black controls, black LCD showing the allblack readout (with apologies to Douglas Adams and Hotblack Desiato). Yeah, the headphones sucked, but I didn't mention them because after mp3 players from Archos, Creative and Apple I've decided that all mp3 player headphones suck. I'm tempted to see what Sony does, now that they've accepted the inevitability of mp3...

The discontinued RadioShack IR remote control Eric convinced me to buy. The idea of the remote was nice but it was a huge remote that did not work well. Additionally, it seemed to 'override' the regular remotes rendering them useless.

Years and years ago I worked at a Radio Shack store. At the time, I was like a kid in a candy store (I was really a nerd in an elctronics store), so I had the opportunity to buy tons of useless crap. I've got a whole box full of this stuff, but here's a few that I can remember off the top of my head. -Radio Shack FM Radio wrist watch (with digital tuner) - I looked really strange with headphones plugged into my watch. Plus, the way it changes stations is funky. There are two buttons, skip and reset. Skip goes to the next strong station, reset takes you back to the beginning... no readout on the station you're tuning into. - Radio Shack Personal Data Directory - It's a wacky toy this thing. It holds 75 contacts with up to 2 telephone numbers each. Then, when you want to call someone, you hold it up the the mouthpiece of a touchtone phone and it dials for you. You can also just use it to dial, in case the keypad on the phone you want to call out on is locked. It's been out of the box no more than 3 times. -Radio Shack 1.3 Ghz Digital Scanner - Regardless of what anyone tells you, listening to police and fire frequencies isn't THAT interesting. I had some fun with it back in the day when people used low frequency cordless phones, but everyone has a 900 digital, 2.4, or 5.8GHz cordless phone these days, which is beyond the range of the scanner. Oh well, another piece for the museum. As I said, I've got a whole box full of stuff like this somewhere. I'll post my findings if I can ever find that box.

Mind Over Matt'er - Technology musings, opinion, and more straight from TechLore's head geek.

anything Apex. Barf. My son saved up his money to buy his own DVD player. What a piece of junk. Whenever you turn it on it shoots the volume all the way up. Of course when you are 13 - a $40.00 investment is huge, and that was all the DVD player he could afford.

Meri - Thanks for the tip, but i actually like writing/drawing, i just hate the mess of paper. So i always have my laptop with me for content capture, but i also carry a small pouch of art markers and some >100 brightness copy paper. a tablet would make that less of a hassle, but - tablets today aren't quite there yet. So I should also say that i've tried small page scanners for importing all the paper, as well as a digital camera for whiteboard capture. still kinda hobbled, but it gets the job mostly done. I really, really want a tablet with shape recognition and the ability to take sketches, make them into shapes, and use the output directly in visio or a comparable mac product. why isn't there a product that makes the human/digital barrier less of a barrier?

I have many but since we are on radio shack,It is the opti-mouse Supposedly designed for my sony vaio notebook. Install wizard cant find a place to download too. Any help would be greatly appreciated. bango1313@aol.com thanks

after longing several years for 1.
saving my pennies, i finally bought a canon xl1s.
boy was i happy when i got it.
until i found out the main board was blown.
haven't even used it yet
and i have a $1079 repair on my hands.
i've pleaded repeatedly to canon for assistence.
TOUGH has been the reply.